Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2: Not Just An Awesome Movie, A Technological Masterpiece Too

I got the chance to see Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 yesterday at Dolby's London in-house theater. I was particularly keen to catch this one, not just because I'm a massive fan of the first movie, but also because this film represents a technological shift that I'm fascinated by.

The film is great by the way and tech fans will unleash a hearty laugh toward the end of the movie. But this isn't a film review as such, and there will be no spoilers within.

In the UK there is virtually no commercial way to watch a movie in Dolby Vision, which is the company's digital projection system that allows for high dynamic range presentations. In addition, it's hard to think of a better place to watch a movie in the best possible picture and sound quality - not to mention the Atmos sound system is a thing of staggering beauty in this cinema.

So the movie is an interesting one. Shot in 8K on the new Red Weapon camera system it does look staggering different to most movies. At several points in the film I took a moment to examine the picture, and I can honestly say I've never seen sharpness and detail in a feature film. There's a debate to be had about that, and I'll touch on it in a minute, but from a technical point of view, this movie is just staggering.

The Red Weapon - with the S35 8K sensor - is something special in its own right. This is a camera that can shoot in 8192 x 4320 resolutions at up to 60fps. But the one thing I noticed when I got home and looked at the first Guardians movie is just how staggering the difference is in looks.

The original movie was digital too, shot on Arri digital in 2.8k (2880×2160), but the difference between the two seems massive to me. The first thing I noticed was the blue skin of Yondu and how it seems to have changed. But there's a lot more going on here, and overall I thought the look of Guardians Vol. 2 was nothing short of breathtaking. This is a world, don't forget, where a lot of aliens have fairly vivid skin colours - it looks stunning on screen.

To me, the whole thing becomes even more staggering when you consider that the movie was mastered in 4K, which presumably means that the special effects were all done in that resolution too. While that seems obvious, Guardians is a movie in which there is almost no frame that doesn't have some CGI in it. Just by virtue of the fact that two of the characters are entirely computer generated. This film is quite a technical achievement.

Anyway, here's my advice for this movie. See it on the best screen you can. If you have access to either IMAX or Dolby Vision, you simply have to see it in one of those formats. The staggering amount of light that you can get out of Dolby's laser projectors was, at times, almost unbelievable. HDR is at its best when you can't tell that there's anything special happening, but you can see every detail.

Don't neglect the sound either. I've heard a lot of movies in Atmos, but Guardians again seems to use the soundstage perfectly. There's a lot going on in this movie from an audio perspective, and Dolby's object orientated sound mixing system seems to do an amazing job of making you feel like you're there.

I've seen a fair few digital cinema movies projected on digital hardware at this point, and I don't think I've ever seen anything quite as breathtaking as this movie. There's, obviously, an argument that says cinema should never be about the picture quality, but I'm an AV geek, so I have to notice these things. And while there are lots of directors who won't go near digital, a movie like Guardians suits the format perfectly. It gives the action clarity, while making for a visual feast that many earth-bound movies simply can't deliver anyway.

I'm sure there are a lot of people who would say that digital dilutes the art of moviemaking. The good news is that directors do still have a choice. I wouldn't change the way Quentin Tarantino shoots film, and there's a place for James Gunn to do amazingly detailed digital movies too.